


Link to All

by bookwormally



Series: VanVen Week 2019 [6]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kingdom Hearts III Spoilers, M/M, Mentioned Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Terra and Aqua also get mentions but they're arguably less than Sora, VanVen Week (Kingdom Hearts), Vanitas Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwormally/pseuds/bookwormally
Summary: At 15, the mark of your potential soulmate(s) appears over your heart. It is not necessarily a romantic bond, nor even one the universe has determined will be the only one in your life. It is simply a bond that you could develop.Ventus and Vanitas were always going to be bonded. It is simply a question of how deeply and the shape their bond will take.VanVen Week Day 6: Anew | Restless | Monochrome
Relationships: Vanitas/Ventus (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: VanVen Week 2019 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576693
Comments: 9
Kudos: 77





	Link to All

**Anew** | ~~Restless~~ | **Monochrome**

At fifteen, your soulmate mark appears over your heart. No force in the universe will make you be with them, but the magic that fills the worlds shows you one possible form your future happiness could take. The marks are varied: crowns, birds, plants, and elements. There are books on deciphering marks and groups that meet for people to try and find their match. Every world celebrates the marks differently, but they all mean the same thing: there is something tying you together.

Ventus has come back to himself in the Land of Departure in time for his fifteenth birthday. There’s a cake and presents and Master Eraqus teaches him how to fly upwards on  _ aero _ -powered gusts. It’s a wonderful day and Ventus does not look at the skin over his heart once. None of them ask. To keyblade wielders, finding your soulmate can be fraught. Either you have a partner who will understand and be part of your life of guardianship...or you will have to leave your duty for them, living in a world that will never know of all the life beyond its borders.

Aqua and Terra are lucky. They have each other even if they’re still trying to understand if they work better as romantic partners or platonic ones. Either way, their bond is so strong that it makes Ven feel stronger just being beside them. They’re his best friends.

But some things he wants to sort out on his own.

Alone in his room at the end of a great day, Ventus pulls his shirt off. Right over his heart, a black and white mark has formed. Three harsh white lines make the rough shape of half of a heart. It’s filled in with black and around it is the faded grey lines of something else Ven can’t make out. 

He pulls his sleep shirt on quickly, his stomach in a knot. He doesn’t know what it means, but it’s nothing like the bright, beautiful marks Terra and Aqua share. Ven’s…it makes him feel sick.

_ It’s fine. I’m a keyblade wielder. I don’t have to do anything about it. I’ve got my friends and my master. _

* * *

Vanitas is born of darkness, but he is not given a  _ birthday _ . He has the darkness, he has his master, he has his lessons in strength and pain, and he has the Unversed.

Far distant he can feel Ventus’s feelings, feel him be  _ happy _ . It makes Vanitas hate him, makes him want to rip him open and take back what is  _ his. _ But his master tells him to be patient, to wait for strength to come to Ventus.  _ “Otherwise you will never be whole, boy.” _

He waits, he watches. Some of his agitation slides among the shadows, peering in through the windows to watch these students of light study. Vanitas watches through its eyes. He sees his face, his body, he sees the one they call Ven smile and enjoy treats and kind hands and  _ hates him. _

His emotions follow Ventus to his room, where he is alone. Vanitas could have it strike him now, scare him, scar him, make him feel the pain he feels  _ all the time… _ But he watches as Ventus removes his shirt, feels as Ventus starts to panic, sees the mark on his chest that was never there before.

Vanitas pulls away, lets his emotions become smoke. He digs his fingers into the suit he’s always worn, right over his heart. He digs into the tendrils of darkness, tears them open. He never sees his skin, so pale, so close to right…

The mark on Ventus, the new one, Vanitas’s chest has a mirror image of it.  _ Still not right either. _

The darkness weaves itself closed and Vanitas pretends he never saw it. It won’t matter once he’s whole again.

* * *

_ So life goes… _

Negativity spreads through the worlds. Negativity curls itself between Ven and Terra and Aqua, spreading like a fog until they can’t see each other anymore. They love each other, but the words come out wrong or not at all until they’re walking away from each other in a world that’s supposed to be so light.

They come back together in a Graveyard, so many things now broken. Their master, gone. Ventus, marked to bring about the end of the worlds. Terra and Aqua, desperate and fierce, but so scared too.

Xehanort and Vanitas do not wait. They come forth like a tidal wave and all they can do is swim for their lives. Everything erupts into chaos and all Ven can do is clash with Vanitas, just like he wanted.

_ Their keyblades meet and the thump in both of their chests is ignored for the battle. _

_ In their heart, light flashes every time they come together. The x-blade, incomplete and imperfect, shivers in Vanitas’s grip, but all is desperation. _

_ Ventus beats him, watches the x-blade break into pieces, watches Vanitas fade into light as his heart pulls itself back together. _

_ He fades into light to find his way to another heart where such traumas have never shaken the foundation. He finds a place to heal. _

* * *

In Sora’s heart, Ventus finds himself completely without injury, without scars. The mark over his heart is the only blemish on him, still black and white and grey. He traces it sometimes during those long sleepy days of dreams. Master Eraqus had told him:  _ Not all marks are meant for romance. They show only a very deep possible tie. _ What tie could be deeper than the one between him and Vanitas? It should make him feel better, but all Ventus can think is that even this, even his possible happiness has been eroded by Xehanort’s corruption. 

That the mark still exists means that somewhere out there, so does Vanitas. Falling in and out of the dreams, Ventus looks for him through Sora’s eyes. What he’d do if Sora found him, Ventus doesn’t know. But he looks.

The dreams get deeper, stranger, full of brightly colored beasts he’s never seen the like of before. Someone in a black coat speaks mocking words and for a moment, Ventus  _ feels lightning in his chest. “Your heart is a prison.” Sora gasps in shock at the face that floats before him, but with a blink it’s gone. _

Sora doesn’t find Vanitas. Sora finds Ventus.

Vanitas finds them both.

Ventus is aware of danger, of Aqua on the ground under a keyblade  _ (again) _ , and of a figure masked and dark. Their keyblades collide and Ventus feels the thump in his chest again. He can imagine it, the mark on his chest etching itself deeper as he and Vanitas clash again. Light and darkness flare from them both, but it’s already fading as he lands on the ground in front of Aqua. She pushes herself up to her feet as he glares at Vanitas.

_ Is he marked? Does he feel it? Does he even know about the possibility of a soulmate? _

The mask tells him nothing and at the sound of other voices, Vanitas leaves. He throws a taunt over his shoulder about their clash, the war, and Ven knows they’ll meet again in the Graveyard. 

_ Around and around and around the world goes.  _

There’s no time to think on the mark on his chest. There’s so much to know, to understand, with a war only hours away. Sora, Aqua,  _ Terra _ , Lea, Isa, the worlds, the war,  _ destiny _ . Ven takes a quiet moment to laugh at himself and the horrible feeling in him that tells him that it used to be simpler when it was just about his broken in half heart. It’s a terrible thought and he shoves his way outside to look up at the stars. He pretends for Aqua that everything has been a fun little dream because he can see the shadows in her eyes and the way her hand lingers over her heart.

They lift their wayfinders to the sky and whisper Terra’s name and the mark on Ventus’s chest burns all night long.

* * *

_ “The lights will come. You, my thirteen darknesses, will clash with their seven lights. You will forge the keys. I will open Kingdom Hearts and this world will be made anew.” _

_ “Finally, I will have the x-blade.” _

It was supposed to be his. Vanitas curls his empty fingers into his palms. Mere hours remain until the lights will arrive and his master will be able to form Kingdom Hearts. But, Vanitas can only think of the past, of what was supposed to be.

The price of failure is becoming even more of a pawn. 

Vanitas clenches his hands in his hair and exhales through his teeth.  _ It was supposed to be his. Everything was. Ventus took his face, his heart. Xehanort will now take the x-blade from him. _

_ All he wanted was to be whole and to make a world where he didn’t hurt anymore. _

He pulls on his hair and then digs his fingers into the tendrils of his suit over his heart. He ditched the coat once he felt Ventus again. He’s never needed it and he wanted, needed-. No, he didn’t need it.  _ (He wanted Ventus to know it was him, to feel their tie and their bond after the years. His chest has been burning.) _

The mark on his chest is still the mirror of Ventus’s. Still three rough lines to make half a heart, still filled with white, it still has the faded grey lines behind it, impossible to decipher. It burns against his chest now and he brushes a careful finger over it, familiarizing himself with this new pain. He bites on his lower lip and then presses a finger to the mark’s center, the center of the broken heart. It  _ burns _ and he draws back.

_ What the hell is Ventus doing with their heart? _

* * *

All is chaos, but this is not the first war for the x-blade that Ventus has been through. He expected the chaos, expected Xehanort to split them apart. But they run further into the man’s plans, into the trap.

Terra and Vanitas are waiting.

Aqua is stronger, fiercer, and she’s fought Terra like this before. Ven knows Vanitas, knows his strategies, knows how he won before. They split further and try to beat back the darkness.

The thump in his chest is louder now even as Wayward Wind and Void Gear shriek against each other. Dark fire and _aero_ winds swirl around them, both of them darting back and forth to try and get an edge. They are two halves of a whole and Ventus feels entirely alone with Vanitas. Neither of them makes any progress, pushing and pulling and maintaining a strange equilibrium. Harsh breathing, the grit of the dirt under their feet, and the thump in his chest are Ven’s entire world.

Then Sora comes, a river of light and strength, and they pin Vanitas between them. It’s Ven’s keyblade that lands the blow that cracks Vanitas’s mask and he backs off quickly, something like horror curling in his stomach.

The glass cracks and falls with a strangely quiet sound. Vanitas lifts his head slowly to look at them and Sora gasps.  _ (Ven’s stomach had turned over as he looked at Sora’s face and saw Vanitas’s. There had been a moment where he thought that if their hands touched, the world would end. But no, Sora is just...their second chance.) _ Vanitas blinks and nods. “You define me, Sora.”

His voice is wrong, gravely and broken, and there’s something _wrong_ here. Ven steps forward before Vanitas can keep talking. He puts a hand over the mark on his heart that feels like a brand. “Vanitas!”

Vanitas goes silent and looks at him with that awful gold eye. He stares and what little of his face is visible is so  _ blank. _ Ven presses his hand down on the mark, feels it burn, and stares back. “We didn’t ask for this, Vanitas. We didn’t ask to be shifted apart nice and neat, into darkness and light, if that’s what we even are. We don’t have to be this. Nothing in the universe says we have to be what he wants!”

Sora is watching them, silently, and Aqua and Terra’s fight goes on, but the world could just be the two of them again. Ven glares and holds his heart and waits.

Vanitas’s fingers twitch and then rise to press a spot over his heart. They mirror each other again, some kind of life flickering back into Vanitas's eye. “What are you after, Ventus? You think this will stop?”

“No. No, I know this won’t stop until he gets what he wants or we kill him.” Ventus digs his fingers into his shirt, into the straps of his armor, into everything between his hand and the mark that he’s _hated_ since he turned fifteen. It’s been burning for hours and he wants it to _stop._ _He wants it all to stop. He wants to go home with Terra and Aqua and make friends with Sora and his friends. And he wants to understand why Vanitas’s mark on him makes him feel like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff with so much waiting beyond. He feels ill at the promise of a fall, but maybe if he opens his arms, he'll know what it is to fly._

Even at a distance, he can see Vanitas’s fingers dig into his suit in the exact same place. “Kill him,” Vanitas says slowly. “You think you can?”

Ventus nods sharply. “We will. We’ll kill him and we’ll end this war and then…” He takes a breath. “Then, we’ll finally get to be something else.” He steps forward once, twice. Wayward Wind comes to his left hand and he stops in front of Vanitas with it hanging by his side. Vanitas still holds his suit, staring at him, uncomprehending.

They’re the exact same height and Ventus lifts his keyblade. Vanitas’s free hand twitches, Void Gear coming back to him even as his shadow is curling into smoke. Ventus holds his keyblade out and waits. Slowly, eye narrowing, Vanitas mirrors him again. Their keyblades touch and Ventus feels the thump shake through them both. His keyblade vanishes and he takes Vanitas’s wrist instead. “We don’t have to do what he wants,” he repeats, softer than before. “Our bond...it’s more than that.”

“How do you know?” Vanitas could break apart so easily here. His form is so much negativity and darkness and this was his  _ purpose _ , but staring at Ventus, there could be  _ more. _

Ventus squeezes Vanitas’s wrist. “Because we’re marked for each other. More than Xehanort, more than the x-blade, we’re tied to each other.”  _ He doesn’t know, but he feels, and the thump of his heart when they come close is meant for more than rending the worlds apart.  _

_ May your heart be your guiding key. _

Vanitas twists his hand in Ven’s grip. Ven’s fingers slide over the suit, but then Vanitas’s gloved fingers wrap around his tightly. “I want...to be whole,” Vanitas says. “I want to be  _ whole _ and this was the only way.”

“No,” Ven says softly. “It’s the only one he gave you. We can find another.” Their fingers are intertwined tightly and the rest of the glass of Vanitas’s mask fades into smoke. Vanitas slumps forward, his head to Ventus’s shoulder and his other hand presses down on Ventus’s branded heart.

_ They reset. _

After the war, after their friends come home hurt and broken, they all need time. Time to heal, time to understand, time to be. It takes months, it will take years.

It is almost Ven’s seventeenth birthday when he and Vanitas sit together on his bed in the middle of the night. They study each other’s marks: the scarred lines, the white and the black they’ve been filled with. For the first time, they reach out and touch their hands together, skin to skin with no gloves in the way.

Like a sunrise, the grey lines bloom into bright red over Ven’s heart. Like new growth, green wraps around the broken half of Vanitas’s heart. A star surrounds each of their broken pieces, a guide to bring them both back home.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it's not clear, Ventus and Vanitas have a red and green wayfinder respectively behind the image of a broken heart. As they get older, the black and white fill will also turn grey instead!
> 
> I could seriously turn this into a longform fic, but I do not have the time. RIP. Hopefully, you enjoyed! One day left!


End file.
